Today's high quality production requirements have created a need for an improved means of guiding terminals spaced along a terminal strip into a wire crimp station. The wire crimp station includes a die and an anvil reciprocal with respect to one another for crimping a bare wire end of a conductor onto the barrel end of a terminal and severing the terminal from the strip.
Various types of terminal guides are currently in use in the industry today, and typically require a minimum of 0.015 total clearance between the guide and the terminal, which throws the critical crimp area out of tolerance. In addition, a cut-off tail is often left attached to a terminal after it is severed from the strip. The present invention provides a terminal guide which keeps the terminal locked against three separate faces by three guide contact points. This permits the terminal to be fed into the wire crimp station in proper position at all times to provide accurate crimping and a complete severance of the terminal from the strip.